Action Teams to Help Afghan Women

Humanitarian Assistance Desperately Nedded

With the recent influx of new refugees, a dramatic increase in humanitarian aid to Afghan refugees is desperately needed to save life and reduce instability. Pakistan already hosts some 3.5 million refugees. Humanitarian groups project that military intervention could increase the number of refugees by more than a million. A significant increase in food, shelter, education, and health care services is necessary to stave off starvation, disease and death and to prevent further regional instability that breeds terrorism. Education for refugee girls is necessary to make up for the denial of education under the Taliban, and to make possible the participation of women in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

Assistance must be provided not only in refugee camps that house some 2 million Afghan refugees, but also in the villages and in the cities of Pakistan to which another 1.5 million refugees have fled. Currently, assistance to the refugee camps is woefully inadequate and assistance to refugees outside of the camps--who mostly belong to the ethnic minority groups persecuted by the Taliban--is non-existent. The conditions among refugees are dire, with little food, with many having no more than plastic sheets for shelter, and with virtually no sanitation. These conditions have resulted in widespread disease, death, and political instability. Afghan women-led NGOs are particularly well-positioned to provide this assistance.

The combination of the worst drought in 30 years and displacement resulting from fighting and the Taliban's brutalities have created pre-famine conditions. The number of people in Afghanistan depending for their lives on food from the UN World Food Program (WFP) has grown from 3.8 million in March to 5.5 million in September. Many in Afghanistan today have nothing more to eat than animal fodder and grass. The situation is especially desperate in the regions of the country that will soon be cut off by snow.

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